


you deserve the best

by Granspn



Series: slide on the ice [2]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Post-Canon, and bj and peg are married but kind of only technically, bc they have some things to work out, the first two chapters focus on hawkeye and margaret's dynamic, the last chapter is hawkbeej basically with strong hawkeye/margaret/bj being best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26077858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn
Summary: my version of what might happen if hawkeye and margaret ran into each other a few years down the line...“She’d always thought of him as a silly person, not a good one. But a silly person will force themself to be good when the only other option is to be evil. It really wasn’t fair, to them or to anybody, to put a person like that in such a serious place, but who ever said the Army was going to play fair?”
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B. J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Margaret Houlihan/OC, Margaret Houlihan/Peg Hunnicutt oh so briefly
Series: slide on the ice [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1874662
Comments: 10
Kudos: 52





	1. isn't it pretty to think so?

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a standalone but the first part explains how we get from there to here, including mostly my theory of how hawk (and BJ) fared after going home
> 
> also, may be important to note that although spoiler alert lmao margaret and hawk do hook up later i really only see them as friends. really good friends of course and that's what this whole thing is about but i guess i'm too much of a hawkbeej truther to go for that

Margaret Houlihan didn’t like being on this side of the emergency room. Her boyfriend had been complaining of mild abdominal pain all weekend but chalked it up to the Indian food they had on the first night in the city. Then, paces away from the closing doors on their train he’d almost collapsed, the final nail in the coffin of an acute appendicitis diagnosis. So, she’d rushed him to the hospital they’d passed only a few blocks away and found herself in the E.R. waiting room saddled with both their suitcases and a sense of impending doom. Finally, finally, they told her she could go and see him and where to find the post-op floor.

Exiting the elevator, she turned a corner, and her instincts and the painted line on the floor guided her to the long row of beds full of recuperating patients. She peered around as she walked up the aisle, looking for a familiar face. Up ahead a doctor with his back to her was making a nurse laugh. His salt-and-pepper hair and lopsided posture were enough to remind her of–

“Hawkeye!” A voice called from around a corner and he sped off to answer it.

“Hawkeye?!” Margaret called out before she knew what she was doing,

“Be right with you, I can’t be in two places at once. Yet!” Came his disembodied reply. Margaret remained glued to her place on the floor. She couldn’t do anything but stand there and wait for him to return.

She’d only glimpsed him for a moment, but it struck her that she’d never seen him looking so civilian. It would have been one thing if he was in scrubs; she’d seen him scrubbed a million times. But now he was in _his_ uniform. A checked shirt and a dark tie. The thought of him in anything besides scuffed and bloodied combat boots was almost too discordant to process. And she fell suddenly and inexplicably disappointed at realizing that that meant he hadn’t been the one to do the appendectomy, as if Hawkeye Pierce were the only capable surgeon on the East Coast. With a twinge of guilt she thought of her own appendectomy scar, and that however reluctantly, he’d sewn his signature into her abdomen years ago, one thing among many that couldn’t be undone.

And then he was in front of her again, the best cutter in Korea, looking perfectly content one moment and the next like he’d just watched a train wreck. _Is it the war that stinks or me?_ Margaret half thought and half heard as she wished she were anyone else in the world and not the person who’d just ruined Hawkeye’s day simply by being there.

“Margaret,” he all but whispered, his expression shifting to something more like bewilderment and less like deep-seated grief. He walked over to her like he was being drawn by a magnet, and she felt it, too, as he pulled her into a hug, there in the middle of the post-op ward.

“Margaret, it’s incredible to see you,” he said as they parted, sounding sincere to her for what must have been the first time in his life.

“Hawkeye,” she breathed, “What are you doing here?”

He gestured to his white coat. “I’m a traveling vacuum salesman. What are _you_ doing here?”

“We were in town for a medical conference. He, my, um, my boyfriend’s had an operation,” she answered quickly. Somehow, that was the farthest thought from her mind at the moment. “But I thought you were in Maine. Small town doctor, family practice?” He would have been good at it. All bedside manner and no meatballs.

“I was there, for a while. A few months. But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay around all those people who I knew and who thought they knew me but didn’t really, anymore.”

Margaret nodded. She remembered BJ’s fear that he would go home and be a stranger to Peggy.

“I got an offer to go out go San Francisco, of course, BJ and Peg were gonna put me up,” Hawkeye went on, “But I didn’t want to be that far from my dad again either. Better to be six hours by bus than by airplane,” he said with a small shrug.

“How is your father, is he all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine, he’s great! He’s just passed sixty-five but he’s so far from even thinking about retirement,” Hawkeye said with a loving grin. “How are your folks, okay?”

“Yes, they’re fine,” she said. “They’re not speaking but they’re both… healthy.”

“That’s okay, my parents aren’t speaking either.”

“ _Pierce_.”

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, still smiling the same smile from when he was thinking about his father. “Wait, did you say boyfriend?”

“Oh, shit!” She blurted out. How could she have completely forgotten the reason she was here? “He just had his appendix out.”

“Uh-huh. And this boyfriend of yours, does he have a name?”

His laugh when she told him Ben’s name was the same as it had always been, which is to say unnecessarily loud and altogether contagious.

“You married a doctor called Ben and it wasn’t me?”

“Shut up! We’re not married.”

“Right, right. Isn’t he gonna make an honest women of you?”

“He’s asked me, but… I told him I had to think about it. That was six months ago.”

“Still thinking?”

“All the time.”

He looked like he might be about to put a hand on her shoulder, but instead he just moved to go find his bed and his chart. He was still sleeping.

“He should be up soon, thirty minutes, tops,” Hawkeye said, and handed Margaret his clipboard. “Unless you can think of something we missed.” He was wearing the same smarmy grin he wore when he was flirting for the sake of flirting, not caring about the outcome one way or another. She glanced down at the chart anyway, out of habit.

“Looks perfectly fine.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

He led them down two flights of stairs to the cafeteria where he told the girl behind the register to put their two mugs on his tab.

“So that’s why you’re _here_ here,” he said, “But how long have you been in New York?”

“Just for the weekend,” Margaret said, examining her cuticles to avoid meeting his serious gaze. “We live in Jersey. I’m head of surgical nursing at Princeton General.” She looked up at him when she told him her position. He beamed.

“Margaret, congratulations, that’s fantastic!” And oh, so civilian. “How long have you been there?”

“I started there about two years ago,” she admitted. “I got the promotion last month.”

“I– Margaret, that’s amazing,” he said sincerely. “But do you mean to tell me you’ve lived what, an hour and a half away from me for two whole years and you never thought to look me up? I’m in the book!”

Of course she’d thought of it. She’d just never had the guts to.

“I don’t know, Hawkeye. It’s… it’s hard.” She took a sip of coffee. Having a prop during a conversation like this always proved invaluable. “You didn’t look me up either.”

“Fair enough,” he said. He took a sip, too. “Are you happy, Margaret?”

She was surprised. “Yes, I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, well. Sometimes I don’t know how happy I’ll ever be. I’m trying to get to the best I can.” She hoped if anyone would understand, he would.

“You know, somehow that makes sense.”

“How about you, are you happy, Doctor?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he smiled, warm and crooked. “I’ll always be a little cracked, you know that. I see Sidney about it once a week. It helps a lot.”

“Oh, I’m very glad to hear that,” she said, feeling an inexplicable deep sense of relief. Learning that Hawkeye was seeing a psychiatrist was somehow five times better than it would have been to learn he was married. 

They chatted and sipped their coffee and somehow it wasn’t even awkward. (“Do you sleep?” “Ha! Are you kidding? Of course not. I haven’t slept since 1949.”) (“Well, it’s nothing like we went through.” “You’re telling me appendicitis isn’t as bad as the Korean War?”) She learned that he’d been out to visit BJ and that the Hunnicutts had come to see him a couple times, and that they wrote each other almost every day. It wasn’t exactly like being transported to the past, but she wouldn’t have wanted it to be. It made her wonder if they would have gotten along if they’d met before the war, in their normal lives. She was almost sure they wouldn’t have. They hadn’t, until more than a year after they’d known each other. He hadn’t honestly changed an awful lot while she’d known him; if anything, he’d become even more disillusioned and prone to deflection than when he got there. Sometimes she felt like a completely different person to who she was before Korea.

Back in Ben’s room, Hawkeye picked up his chart again.

“Josh wants to keep him overnight,” he said, “That’s Dr. Katz, who did the operation. Great hands. Plays violin for money on the subway in his spare time.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” Margaret said. She saw Hawkeye’s gaze shift from her to the suitcases she’d left under Ben’s bed when they’d gone to the canteen.

“Do you have a place to stay tonight?” He asked.

“Oh. Well, I could just book our room again.”

“Stay at mine,” he said casually. “I can’t abide you paying for another night in a hotel, that would be inhumane in this town. I’ll sleep on the couch, it’s absolutely no trouble. I insist, unless you really don’t want to.”

“No, I… Thank you, Hawkeye.”

“My pleasure. Now where were we…”

“Hey,” she said, suddenly having an idea and not believing she hadn’t thought of it sooner. They could hav been talking to him this whole time! “Can you make long distance phone calls from here?”

“Sure, but they charge it to the room.”

“No problem. Give me that phone.” He obliged. “Hello, Operator? I’d like to place a call to San Fransisco, please.” She watched Hawkeye’s eyes grow wide when he realized what she was doing. 

“Margaret!” He whispered, loudly, grinning even as he tried to grab the phone out of her hands.

“Yes, thank you. Mill Valley, please,” she placed her hand over the receiver. “Or don’t you know the number?”

“Yeah, sure I do, but what are you doing?”

“I just want to say ‘hello.–’ Yes, I’m trying to reach Hunnicutt. Doctor and Mrs. Hunnicutt. Thank you.” She rolled her eyes at Hawkeye while the phone rang. “You’re useless.”

“It’s just gonna upset you! You can’t just dive back into that world if you’re not ready.”

But it was happening whether she wanted it or not. Hawkeye had been an accident, but BJ would be of her own accord.

“Hunnicutt residence,” a female voice finally answered.

“Oh my God, Peggy,” Margaret said. Hawkeye pulled up a chair and sat opposite where she was on the end of Ben’s bed.

“May I ask who’s calling?” Peggy said. Margaret could just picture her, in a perfect little dress in their perfect little house, their perfect little daughter playing by her perfect little feet.

“I’m so sorry, this is completely out of the blue. It’s Margaret Houlihan,” she said.

“Margaret!” Peggy said, and Margaret’s system was flushed with relief. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting but she’d certainly been afraid that Peggy wouldn’t have known who she was, that BJ hadn’t mentioned her once, and she’d get hung up on and told never to call again.

“BJ–” Peggy said, then it sounded like she dropped something, “Shit! BJ’s not here right now but is everything okay? Do you need anything? Can I help?”

“Oh, no, no, no! Everything’s fine, I… I’m in New York and I’ve just run into Hawkeye. You can imagine how that made me think to call you.”

“Of course,” Peggy said, and Margaret swore she could hear her smile through the phone. Her voice was warm, just like someone’s who BJ was in love with should be. “I’ll tell him you called. I can’t wait to see his face.”

“Oh, thank you,” Margaret said. Her face was growing warm. She was starting to feel embarrassed for having called. She moved to hang up when Peggy spoke again.

“And Margaret?” She said, “Why don’t you write sometime? BJ– We would love to hear from you.”

Margaret didn’t know what to say. And when she didn’t say anything, Peggy eventually hung up. Hawkeye gently took the phone from her hands and put it away.

“Are you all right?” He asked, but before she could answer Ben started to stir.

“Maggie, is that you?” He asked groggily. She heard Hawkeye stifle a laugh behind her.

“Oh, you do not get to talk to me about nicknames, Benjamin Franklin,” she said to him under her breath before moving up the bed to sit beside Ben. “Yes, it’s me, darling. How are you, okay?”

“Hmm,” he said. “Doc?”

“Hawkeye Pierce,” he said, walking over to introduce himself. “You’re doing fine, but we’re gonna keep you overnight for observation. You let that go pretty late, we don’t want to see you get an infection.”

Ben nodded. “Hawkeye…” he said, still clearly out of it from the anesthesia. Hawk and Margaret shared a glance. “Hawkeye… Hunnicutt?” Now that really made him laugh.

“Ah, so you have told him about me!” Hawkeye said once he wasn’t doubled over anymore.

“Of course I have! Now would you be quiet, he clearly needs rest!” She said, though the scolding became ineffective due to her own unstoppable grin. “Darling, you just sleep, okay? I’ll be here to pick you up first thing tomorrow.”

“You stay with him a while,” Hawkeye said. “I get off at six. I’ll walk you home. We can pick up a pizza on the way. This place, Rocco’s, makes a great slice, and the best garlic knots in New York. And hey, you can pick the toppings,” he said, with a quick flick of the eyebrows. She supposed there really was no one he cared to emulate more than Groucho Marx. She didn’t notice until he had left that his hand had been steadying her shoulder.

People would always talk about how Hawkeye was such a good guy. Always standing up for what he believed in, calling out injustice, and not caring who he annoyed in the process or how much trouble it got him it. She supposed he did do all those things. Still, she’d always thought of him as a silly person, not a good one. But a silly person will force themself to be good when the only other option is to be evil. It really wasn’t fair, to them or to anybody, to put a person like that in such a serious place, but who ever said the army was going to play fair?

Hawkeye came and collected her at six, like he’d said. She kissed Ben goodbye and as he started to lead her uptown, she took a moment to actually take a good look at Hawkeye and see how he was doing. If he looked like he’d aged ten years while they were in Korea, he looked like he hadn’t aged a day since they’d been home. His hair was still graying, and he was still unshaven, but he looked less scruffy in general. His shirt hadn’t been ironed, but it hadn’t been folded either. At first, it confused her how he could look so well, considering how he’d been when she’d last seen him. After all, men who’ve just come back from nervous breakdowns don’t always appear to be at the peak of physical health either. But after she thought about it for a minute, it made perfect sense. He wasn’t a crazy person; the war made him crazy. The war gave him delusions, night terrors, gaps in his memory, and manic episodes. Being home meant he still had to carry that trauma with him, they all did, but that living each day wasn’t like constantly going back and digging around in every wound he’d gotten there anymore. She’d spent so long worrying that he’d been broken forever that she hadn’t even considered the possibility that he was healing.

Some things were certainly different though. For instance, all along the walk home, Hawkeye didn’t make a pass at her once.

“So, when did you turn into the perfect gentleman?” She asked, bumping him playfully with her elbow.

He looked into her eyes and smiled, making the effort so she would know he wasn’t joking.

“Simple respect,” he said. “That’s all I got for you, now.”

Maybe the war hadn’t changed him. But something had.

His apartment was a fourth floor walk up in a four story brownstone a few blocks from the river. He balanced the pizza box on his hip while he jimmied the front door key and eventually let them in.

“You do that very deftly,” she commented.

“Call that surgical precision.”

The apartment was small, just a bedroom, living room, and a kitchen really. It was messy without being dirty. There were blazers and ties strewn around, as well as half-read books sitting open with their spines up, and empty coffee cups on windowsills, but not enough to surprise her given that he was a man pushing forty living alone.

“I would have done my chores but my dad wasn’t around to withhold my allowance,” Hawkeye said, apologizing for the mess. She waved him off. It was no trouble, really. She’d been put off military cleanliness anyway. These days she preferred her homes to look lived-in. She went about clearing the kitchen table, feeling a hitch in her stomach when she recognized the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, since Ben had the same one resting on his bedside table at home.

“Eyeball bruits,” she said, as Hawkeye handed her some plates.

“Thanks, but I prefer pepperoni.”

“They’re in your journal,” she said.

“Oh, right,” he said. He looked at her like he was trying to figure out if there was a deeper meaning to what she was saying. She could hear her pulse racing in her ears and wasn’t sure why. Hawkeye cleared his throat.

“Can I get you anything, beer, water, tea? I’m afraid I can’t offer you a martini since I can’t drink gin without going into a cold sweat and vomiting,” he said, altogether too cheerfully.

“I think I could use a glass of water. This day was a lot more exciting than I ever planned, and that was before I even knew you were going to be involved.”

Over dinner, she told him how she’d been. How she’d spent time at the VA hospital near Fort Dix until she’d gotten a call about a position at Princeton General, and how she’d stepped into normal civilian life with about as much trepidation as it must have taken him to get into the Army. She told him how she’d been so nervous on her first day, but Ben had steadied her hands in the O.R. while she assisted him, and they’d grown friendly, and eventually fallen in love. Hawkeye did everything right, telling her how happy he was for her and congratulating her at every turn, though she thought she could hear seeds of doubt malingering in the garden of his kind words. She told him how her and Ben had gotten a little apartment in town since they could finally afford it after her promotion, and how she could tell her father was disappointed even if he tried not to show it.

“Howitzer Al Houlihan,” Hawkeye reminisced. “Somehow I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t take a shine to me.”

“God, I was so furious with you and BJ. I know I was wrong, but I still didn’t trust you not to try and fuck things up for me.”

“We didn’t always make it easy,” Hawkeye said. _No_ , she thought _, you didn’t_.

“I think I’ll take you up on that cup of tea, now, if that’s all right,” Margaret said quietly. Hawkeye squeezed her hand then got up to boil water. While the kettle heated he fetched her some sheets and pillowcases and made her bed up, then did the same for the couch for himself. He pressed the warm mug into her hands and it was like being suddenly wrapped in a down blanket.

“There you go,” he said gently. “You must be tired.”

She nodded. She hadn’t even realized how exhausted she was. The adrenaline rush that had come just from seeing him then restarted every time she saw him again must have finally worn off, and she could feel her body crashing even as her mind was racing.

“We can talk in the morning,” he said, leading her to the bedroom and standing in the doorway while she moved to sit on the bed. “I’m sorry I never called. I really missed you, Margaret. Even for everything that happened, in the end you were a really good friend to me. And BJ. I hope… I hope we can stay in each other’s lives now, if you’d like that.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling like she was melting into the mattress. He’d meant a lot to her, too, of course, but they’d never said it out loud quite like that. She’d always had the feeling that the way she and he had said goodbye and the way he and BJ had were supposed to be swapped. She saw his expression grow concerned when she’d been quiet for too long.

She smiled through her slightly quivering lip. “I’d like that very much, Hawkeye.” He sighed in relief, and rapped the doorframe where it was steadying him.

“Oh, good,” he said. “Goodnight, Margaret.” 

Margaret had often thought she had no friends in Korea. She’d gone wildly back and forth between hating Hawkeye and needing him, then hating him and liking him, and eventually hating him and loving him, in some way or another. She’d gone from hating everything he stood for to starting to see where he was coming from, to starting to look forward to watching him put someone in their place when she knew they’d said something to set him off. And things had only improved once BJ got there. She hadn’t been as glad to see McIntyre go as Frank had been, but she wasn’t sorry to see him off either, even if he was nice to look at. Unlike Hawkeye, sometimes she really had thought Trapper was more trouble than he was worth. But BJ Hunnicutt was the definition of a good influence. While Frank hated BJ for getting “corrupted” by Hawkeye, whatever that meant, Margaret always thought the opposite was happening. She admired BJ for his fierce loyalty to his family, and how he stepped up taking care of Hawkeye when everyone else on camp seemed to think he was indestructible. Memories of spending time laughing, joking, and solving problems with the both of them were some of the happiest of her life, which made it even more painful that they could easily be some of the worst of theirs. She lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling. Even with the fresh linens Hawkeye had brought her, everything still smelled like him.

Margaret woke up confused. She’d expected to be in her apartment in Princeton. But the blanket was too downy, the pillow was too fat, and it smelled equal parts distant and familiar. What _was_ that? _Oh._ She remembered, her eyes snapping open and growing wide. Hawkeye’s apartment. She closed her eyes again and fell back on the pillow. She found herself hugging the blankets up to her chest and had to stop herself from breathing in deeply; that felt somehow uninvited, invasive, intimate. She rolled out of bed ( _Hawkeye’s bed)_ and got a good look at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy with sleep, her hair in disarray. Sometimes she touched it up with highlights but mostly she’d let it turn to a sort of ashen gray color halfway between natural blonde and platinum. She fumbled in her bag for something to tie it back with, not bothering with a brush or a comb. If anyone had seen her at her worst before it was Hawkeye Pierce; she didn’t have to get dolled up around him.

She’d been so distracted the night before, so overwhelmed by the flood of memories and the almost disturbing sense of familiarity she had around him that she hadn’t really gotten a good look at his room. She peered around, carefully eyeing his various accouterment and decorations: a framed _Horse Feathers_ poster, a color photo of him and four other guys in Columbia powder-blue graduation caps and gowns, a fishing rod and small bowl of hand-tied lures, a photo of a couple in front of a rocky cove _,_ a New York City subway map, a Victrola and a stack of jazz records, a stuffed bass mounted on the wall that when she went over to feel it she found was fake, and two teeming floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Tentatively, she ran her fingers along the spines of some of his collection. The books were invariably worn, like he was incapable of reading anything just once. They appeared to be organized haphazardly, but she hovered over a clump of Hemingways and pulled out a well-thumbed copy of _The Sun Also Rises_. Leafing through it, she found he’d written small notes in the margins and underlined quotes in pencil. She had to tear her gaze away from whatever he’d found important enough to highlight, feeling like somehow that would be overstepping the bounds of good company. She replaced it and moved to a beautiful edition of _Just-So Stories_ with elaborately painted binding and gold leaf along the edges of the pages. No margin notes in there. The last book she pulled was a thin pulp mystery. Opening it to the inside cover, she found an inscription.

“ _The last page is mysteriously missing. $20 says you can’t guess who did it. BJ.”_

She shut the book with a jolt and jammed it back in the shelf. She smoothed her hair and tied it into a neat bun. She needed some sunlight. She opened his curtains and gasped when she saw the view. From his window facing downtown she felt like she could see the whole city, not least straight to the Empire State Building, looming majestically over the Flatiron District in the distance and beyond that downtown and Brooklyn. The view from the hotel had been beautiful, too, of the river and straight across to New Jersey, but this was spectacular. She’d traveled all around the country, the world even, but she’d never lived in a city, certainly never right at the heart of one. She didn’t know how a small-town bumpkin like Hawkeye could get used to it, but he seemed to have adjusted fine.

She heard him puttering around in the kitchen and smelled coffee brewing. She didn’t know why, but she remembered how he took his coffee, with two sugars and no milk, and wondered if that’s still how he took it. She’d had to change her coffee order since moving back. Black coffee just made her stomach turn. She steeled herself, not entirely sure why, and went to join him in the kitchen. It was only half past six, but she’d lost the ability to sleep in, let alone sleep at all, and of course he hadn’t fared much better.

“Ah, good morning,” he said, his voice scratchy from sleep. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, no, I was up on my own.” In her memory, everything about him was loud and frenetic. She’d forgotten how considerate he could be.

“Here, fresh coffee,” he said, handing a the mug, “never instant.”

“That’s great,” she said, “I heard this morning was a very good year.”

He grinned. She knew he loved when she made jokes.

He made her an omelet. She didn’t think he’d remembered about Scully. She’d told him the whole story over scrabble that night, and how she hadn’t thought that the idea of cooking omelets could be such a trigger for heartbreak, but that she could hardly remember feeling angrier than she had at the presumption that she was about to be the perfect housewife there, in the middle of a war.

(They’d talked about a lot that night.

“All right,” she’d said, “Now you know my ideal man. So what’s yours?”

“BJ, probably.”

“I’m serious! Tell me about your ideal woman.”

“Okay.” Hawkeye had straightened in his chair and looked up like he was really thinking. “Fifty percent Carlye. At least. Ten percent you, why not. The ten percent that wants the ten percent of me. Twenty-five percent Beej,” he’d said, and she would have stopped him there but he seemed to be completely serious. “Ten percent Trap. And two and a half percent each for Rita Hayworth and Cary Grant.”

“None for your mother?” She’d asked.

“Yeech! Gross, no. And it is weird that you said your father. Besides, she died when I was a kid. I have enough issues about that without bringing Freud into it.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I never knew that.”

“Thanks.” He’d taken a swig from his beer. “It’s not a secret, Margaret. We just never talk.”

They talked a lot more after that.)

“So where’d you learn to cook?” She asked as he served her eggs at the kitchen table.

“My dad,” he said, climbing into the seat opposite and perching sideways with one leg on the chair.

“Where’d he learn?” _Dumb question_ , she thought, as soon as she’d asked it.

“My mom, when I was little. After that, just practice, I guess.”

He didn’t seem upset, but that was just Hawkeye. His emotions ran high over the big stuff, but he could be very reasonable when it came to the everyday tragedies of life, the ones that would have happened whether there was a war or not. On a day where she’d be upset about a fight with Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscot of West Point, he’d be just as angry over failures at the peace talks. She’d never really seen him be upset about something personal. It must have happened, especially for someone basically as volatile as Hawkeye, but to her his problems always seemed to be political, institutional. He’d helped her through relationship woes again and again and she’d never returned the favor. Just another person she didn’t really know, even if she did love him.

“At home,” Margaret said, “I suppose I do most of the cooking. I don’t mind, though. I really enjoy it, when I have the time.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, not quite as sincerely as some other things he’d said, like maybe he didn’t believe her. One look from him made her question things about herself she’d believed for years. Unfair.

He took a sip of coffee. “I do most of the cooking here, too.”

She was still using up vacation days, but he had another shift at the hospital, so he walked back down the bustling avenue with her and dropped her off in Ben’s room with his discharge papers. She almost mentioned aloud how interesting it was that hospitals used the same terms as the Army for the forms that needed signed for you to get out, but she stopped herself. If anyone would find that comparison un-amusing it was Hawkeye.

They had to say goodbye while Ben was standing-by in a wheelchair, waiting for a nurse to lead them out. She couldn’t stop thinking about the last time they’d said goodbye. She figured maybe he couldn’t either. They’d kissed in front of BJ; would it really be so different in front of Ben? Of course it would, for more reasons than she could count, foremost in her mind being that she had to ride the train back to their apartment with Ben imminently. Upon hindsight she thought maybe the fact that she was supposedly in love with her boyfriend should have been what stopped her.

“It’s not really goodbye this time,” Hawkeye said. “You’re welcome anytime you want. Really.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee next time, okay?”

“It’s a date,” he said.

They just stared at each other for a long moment, sure that if either of them moved they would end up just like they had before, years of passion, some good and some bad, expressing itself the only way it could in what they thought were going to be the last few seconds they ever had together.

“Oh, screw it, come here,” Hawkeye said, and pulled her into a hug. He cradled the back of her head in his hand and she squeezed him so tightly she thought she would go right through him.

“You’re the tops, Margaret,” he said into her ear before planting a light kiss on her cheek. “You’re really something.”

“Yeah,” she breathed, finally letting him go. “You, too.”

 _Funny,_ she thought all along the train ride home. She hadn’t really thought about Hawkeye Pierce in nearly three years, and now she couldn’t get him out of her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fyi, rocco’s is a real pizza place (tho it’s in a different neighborhood than I put it here) but if you ever find yourself in downtown Manhattan go there and treat yourself to literally the best garlic knots in the world. Also, I actually looked up an edition of the NEJM from 1956 and found that article on “eyeball bruits,” uhh whatever that is. the title of this chapter comes from the sun also rises, which I do recommend even if it’s dated in many ways. besides, as hawkeye says, hemingway wrote so well. 
> 
> Up next: I mean, would you be able to let it go that easy if you just found out you were only a reasonable train ride away from hawkeye?


	2. a night at hawkeye's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> well, here it is ladies and germs, the sex chapter. be warned, content wise. i'm trying my best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lowkey this fic is just representation for people like me aka lesbians who nevertheless have a massive crush on hawkeye (and margaret. and bj). anyway

Margaret couldn’t sleep. Not like she usually couldn’t sleep, where she would lie with her eyes closed and doze off every half hour before being jolted awake by some dream or the feeling that she was falling. This was proper tossing and turning, can’t turn your brain off even for a second couldn’t sleep. She had to get out of her head. She rose to get out of bed, reassuring Ben that she was only going for some water.

She checked the clock in the kitchen. It was early, not even midnight, but they’d both been so exhausted they’d called it a night. _Midnight, midnight_. The last train to New York left in twenty minutes. She could be at the station in ten if she hurried, and she always hurried. But what was she thinking? She certainly wasn’t thinking about the fact that Hawkeye lived a fifteen minute walk from Penn Station and was probably sitting awake with the same insomnia as she was right now. Definitely not. She threw on some clothes, and shoes, grabbed her keys, and made for Princeton Junction.

She left a note for Ben saying there had been an emergency at the hospital, but while she waited impatiently for her train she remembered she was still on vacation and there was no way she would have been asked in. She placed a frantic call to the nurses’ desk and implored one of them to tell Ben she was there if he called, and to keep telling him that each time he did. She anticipated the moment her impulsivity would wear off but it never came, and suddenly it was after one in the morning and she was on Hawkeye’s brownstone stoop. She didn’t know what she was doing but she rang the buzzer.

“Hawkeye?” she said, when she heard it click.

“Margaret?” he said into the intercom, then silence. She saw his window open and him peer down at her. A few moments later she heard the front entrance unlock. She didn’t really mean to but she took the stairs two at a time. She knocked on his door. He opened it looking tired, but awakened by curiosity.

“Hi…?” he said.

“Hi,” she answered. For a moment the only sound was their breath, echoing in the tiled hallway. Then before she knew it she was leaning up and he was leaning down and her hands were in his hair and his hands were in her hair and they were kissing, hard and soft at the same time, tongues and teeth and hot breath, and he was closing the door behind them as they staggered backward through his apartment.

It was as good as she remembered. Better, since they weren’t about to die. Once he’d gotten over the initial shock and gotten a little something out of his system, he pushed her back gently with his hands on her shoulders.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s going on. Are you okay?” He was looking down at her in pure concern. She took a moment to compose herself. She ran a hand along his arm, and noticed he was wearing a thick flannel, in blue and gray check, the kind you can only buy in New England, over a t-shirt with an odd logo on it.

“What is that shirt?” she asked, her breathing still heavier than she would have liked.

“What, this?” He looked down at it, distracted for the moment. “It’s the Portland, Maine International Train Depot. You haven’t been? It looks magnificent in the moonlight.”

“What?”

“I got stranded there once overnight during a blackout. No trains, no phones, I couldn’t call my dad. The station manager let me sleep in his office and gave me a staff t-shirt as compensation for the delay.”

“You’ve really lived a charmed life, huh?”

“I had a pretty good stretch going, yeah.”

She looked up at him, blinking, and laughed.

“Well, do you want to take it off?” She said.

“Yeah, I think I can swing that.”

He stripped the flannel off, then the shirt, and discarded them in the hallway. She did the same with her sweater and top as they kept moving toward the bedroom, making no attempt to keep their hands or lips off each other.

“Oh, Hawkeye,” she whispered. At that, he moaned into her neck, and she could all but feel his pulse quicken against her. She gently bit his bottom lip. “Well, now that I know what works,” she started to say, but he took the words out of her mouth, licked them off her tongue.

Then he pulled back a second time.

“Are you sure about this?” He said. She didn’t really hear him. She was distracted by his silvery hair reflecting the sliver of moonlight his window let in.

“You’re very pretty, Hawkeye.”

“You’re very handsome.”

 _Yes_ , she thought, _I’m sure_.

“Aren’t you capable of doing anything without making a joke?” She said, as they pulled each other toward the bed. He’d even changed the sheets again since she’d left. He really had become the perfect gentleman.

“What can I say, I love how your smile tastes.”

“I never liked you, Hawkeye,” she said, but she smiled as she kissed him.

They landed awkwardly on the bed, and he got them more tangled in the blankets since they refused to stop touching while he tried to kick them off, but eventually she found a good position on top of him.

“Oh, fuck, Hawk.”

“Hm,” he said. “BJ calls me Hawk.”

“Jesus, do you have think about BJ while I’m trying to ride you?”

“Not if you say my name,” he whispered into her ear and lightly bit her earlobe.

“Fuck, Hawkeye,” she whispered back. It worked.

She came while he was making her laugh, which was on the one hand totally bizarre and on the other hand maybe the hottest thing that had ever happened to her. She felt herself make a ridiculous face which made him laugh, and she collapsed on the bed next to him, them both panting in a fit of giggles.

“You laugh when you’re beautiful,” he said, leaning over to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Oh, sure,” she said, and she leaned right back over to kiss him again on his stupid wisecracking mouth before settling down into the crook of his arm.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“BJ,” she said.

He laughed, held back what was likely the first wise-ass remark he thought of, and opted for, “Jesus, do you have to think about BJ while I’m–”

“Do you love him?”

“What? Of course I do.” He sounded surprised, almost offended that she would ask.

“No, I mean, are you in love with him?”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah.”

“Were you always?”

“Yeah.” She had to stop asking questions she already knew the answer to.

So, “Does it bother you that he’s still with Peggy?” He sighed, and thought for a minute.

“Not really. Would he be BJ if he wasn’t with her?” She didn’t know, so she didn’t answer. She used her free hand to comb her fingers through Hawkeye’s hair, smoothing where it was in disarray.

“I love him,” he went on, “but not in a way that hurts. More like in a way that’s inevitable.” Margaret pulled him closer. “He loves me, too. Peg just got there first.”

She started to say something but he interrupted with a train of thought of his own.

“You know, I always wanted to apologize for the way we used to treat you, me and Trapper, that is. I mean, we were pretty horrible to you and you– well, you didn’t always deserve it.”

“That is the most half-assed apology I have ever received,” Margaret said, but her eyes showed she’d forgiven him. She’d forgiven him years ago, and over and over again after every time he was horrible because no matter how desperately she felt she should hate him she never really had.

“It might be the best I’ve got,” he said. He relaxed his arm so she could move away from him if she wanted. She stayed put.

“You always acted like you had no respect for the institution of the military at all.”

“We weren’t acting. I still have no respect for it.”

On some level, she’d already known that. On another level she’d thought maybe he’d been playing it up, loving rebelliousness as an act regardless of what it was against.

“Why’d you have to take it out on me?” she asked. It was like all the things she’d ever wanted to say to him were suddenly all spilling out. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it to stop, but she also didn’t think she’d be able to stop it if she did. Hawkeye sighed. He extricated himself from under her and got up to put on a shirt and clean underwear. She reached over and wrapped herself in the comforter, and he sat down next to her, back against the headboard.

“There’s nothing human about the army,” he said. “The way it’s supposed to be allowed to dictate every little thing about your life, from your haircut right down to your shoes and socks. The way you’re allowed to talk to people there just because they’ve got a lower _rank_ than you, whatever that means. There’s nothing human about it, but ours is a humane profession, right?” She looked up at him. “‘Army nurse’ is a contradiction in terms.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. He shrugged. She propped herself up so she was upright enough to lay her head on his shoulder. He slouched down to accommodate her and kissed her temple.

“I am sorry we took it out on you, though. It’s not like the war was your idea. But you were just about the only person there who signed up for it. That makes you the crazy one.”

She wanted to scream. She wanted to scream at him _you’re not crazy, you never were! You were smart and sensitive and they took you and they fucked you up and they put you through the wringer just for fun and you didn’t deserve it and I hope to God you didn’t think I thought you did._ Instead, she climbed back on top of him, still shrouded in the duvet, and straddled his legs with hers. She ran her thumbs over his cheekbones and kissed him a little harder than she meant to, and didn’t stop until she knew she could without starting to cry instead. When she pulled back, he leaned forward, but she stayed him with her hands in his hair. She couldn’t look in his eyes so she watched his Adam’s apple while he swallowed.

“What was that for?” he said, “not that I’m complaining.”

“There was a lot I liked about that life. I liked having rules to follow. I liked that I had to be treated with the same respect as any men of my rank.” She watched a guilty expression pass over his face. “I liked having a purpose in a purposeless world.” She took a deep breath. “You made me wonder about that. If I only liked it because it was the only life I’d ever known. You and the war.”

“Me and the war,” he repeated, looking heartbroken. It depressed her how sad his eyes could look.

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t give in that easy. “You said it was pointless. You said it was a stupid fucking war. It proved you right.”

He ran his thumb along her brow and down her cheek until he was tracing her bottom lip.

“The one time I wish I’d been wrong.” This time when he leaned in to kiss her, she kissed back. It was gentler this time, more tenderness and less desperation. Slowly, she opened the blanket to let him under with her, and she shivered as he ran one hand up her thigh and over her bare back. He placed his other in between her legs and she leaned into him.

“This okay?” he said.

“Mm-hm,” she said into his mouth, nodding. His lips were soft, even if his face was rough, and his fingers, well, just call that surgical precision. She grabbed his shirt when she felt herself getting close.

“I used to hate you,” she said, “ _oh god–_ because I didn’t understand you. That scared me.”

“You scared me,” he said, as his breathing hitched. “I still don’t understand you. You’re more complicated than I’ll ever be. You and BJ.”

“Jesus!” she said. He had her laughing again, maybe because he’d seen how much she’d liked it before, “Do you have to think about BJ while I’m trying to– _ah oh fuck_ ,” she breathed. He kissed her neck and all down her chest as they finished. Laughing, he peeled off what had just been clean underwear and threw them across the room.

“Are you kidding?” she said.

“When am I not?”

She gave him a slight slap on the shoulder before returning to her side of the bed– _her side of the bed?–_ and lying down. He played at being hurt, letting out an anguished yelp and writhing under the covers for a moment before plopping back down beside her.

Hawkeye was fun. He felt things deeply, and he made other people feel things deeply.

“You’re kind of an intense person,” she told him. He laughed.

“You’re one to talk.” She figured that was fair. She laid against his chest and enjoyed the timbre of his voice. “World’s kind of an intense place.”

She fell asleep in his arms and dreamt of Korea, but it wasn’t a bad dream. It just felt warm. Then it became hot, uncomfortably hot, and the trees around her were ablaze. Then she was in her tent, trying to put out the fire in the heater. God, it was so hot. BJ, no, Trapper, no, BJ kept throwing more wood on it every time she managed to get it out. Hawkeye leaned down to fan the flames, and she could only see the back of his head, his hair jet black. An explosion, outside, the sound of choppers, when she looked back Hawkeye was sprawled on the ground looking like he did now, hair glinting gray. When she looked up at BJ, it was Henry, and he collapsed next to Hawkeye. He tried to whisper something to her, but–

For the second morning in a row, Margaret woke up in Hawkeye’s bed, thinking she was at home. She didn’t feel shaken by the dream. That was nothing.

“Morning, Ben,” she said, still only half awake.

“Only my dad calls me that,” said a voice she was not expecting, and she sat bolt upright.

“Pierce!” she said. He frowned, and propped himself up on a pillow.

“Houlihan.”

“Oh, God,” she said, then collapsed back down next to him. “I did it again. With you! I did it again with you!”

“It certainly looks that way,” he said, far too casually.

“I don’t mean sex, you idiot. I mean cheating!”

“I tend to have that effect on people.”

“You mean BJ.”

He hummed in quiet assent. If she had to be in league with anyone, she figured BJ Hunnicutt was okay.

For the second morning in a row, they quietly ate eggs in Hawkeye’s kitchen.

“It’s like I don’t know who you are when you’re not talking all the time,” she said. He smiled bittersweetly.

“Well, I wasn’t always like that, really. I mean, I was still goofy, I would joke around, but… I never really had anything that bad to have to cope with, before.” _The war, that is_. “It really turned my dial up.” He took his plate to the sink and started washing it.

“I sometimes wondered what you were really like,” Margaret admitted. “What you were like before we…” she trailed off. “If we would have gotten along.”

He was silent for a while, focusing on scrubbing each tine of his fork.

“Sure, maybe. I don’t know.”

She was almost insulted. “Well, don’t you think you and BJ would have been friends anyway?”

“Sure, but me and BJ… we see the world the same way. Something that can be made fun of. You take everything so seriously, Margaret. You never would have liked me. I’m not even sure you do now.”

That was a horrible thing to say. She’d grown so fond of him over the time they were away, and it hadn’t faded once they’d gotten home. She thought she’d made that clear the night before. She pushed food around on her plate feeling like a child avoiding their vegetables, thinking how if she left for Jersey now she might even make it before Ben got up.

“Don’t you have work today?” she asked Hawkeye.

“It’s my weekend. Don’t you?”

“I’m still using my vacation days.”

“Uh-huh.” Hawkeye drummed his fingers on the kitchen table. “But I suppose you have to be getting back.”

“I suppose so,” she supposed. She changed back into her clothes from the night before and slipped on her shoes. Hawkeye was standing in the kitchen doorframe. He tried to give her a peck on the cheek as she passed him but he missed and she went red as it landed on her neck.

“Let me walk you to the station,” he said, still back by the kitchen, as she was about to unlock his apartment door. She turned back around and spoke to him from the threshold.

“I know the way,” she said.

“I know.”

“It’s ten blocks in a straight line.”

“I know.”

“Just say it, then,” she said. “Ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Ask me if I want to stay here all day and have sex with you.”

“Oh,” he said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” she said. “Do you?”

“Yes,” he said, “very much.”

“Well, all right then.”

She stripped off her clothes in much the same place as the previous night, and they ended up in a pile on top of Hawkeye’s flannel and train depot shirt. He followed suit as they made their way back to the bedroom.

“You’re lucky I work in a hospital,” he said as she lightly pushed him down onto the bed. “It’s a lot easier to steal condoms from there than the Brooks.”

“Oh, are you like a doctor or something?”

“Or something,” he said, his teeth tickling her neck.

He tasted funny. He hadn’t showered or brushed his teeth, but the coffee was masking that. She couldn’t have been much better. But he was a good kisser. She could see how he’d made it worth their while for all those nurses back at camp. He laid on and laid off at exactly the right moments, never making her wait for anything longer than she wanted. He made jokes and funny comments basically the whole time, which was weird, but unsurprising. If there was an inappropriate time to make a joke, he would find it; sex was just like the O.R. to him.

“Guess I’m a smooth operator,” he said, and she realized she must have vocalized that last thought.

“You. Are. Not. Funny,” she said on four thrusts.

“ _Oh–_ say it again, Margaret. You know I love it when you’re mean to me.”

Apparently, he did. Actually, he seemed to love it when she said anything, hating the silence punctuated only by grunts and moans seemingly more than anything else. She turned around to lie in his lap while she finished herself off. She stayed there afterward, using his knees like armrests.

“One thing I didn’t understand,” she said as he traced patterns on her shoulders, “is why you always said you were a coward. I understand you were afraid of getting shot at, shelled, going to battalion aid or something, you’d have to be crazy not to. But some of the things you did, I mean, you might have been the bravest person in our whole unit.”

“Shut up,” he said.

“I’m serious! Surrendering to that sniper. Disarming that shell, even if it was just a propaganda bomb. The tank.” He didn’t have to ask what she meant by that. Thinking about it made her heart flutter.

“I only did those things because if I hadn’t nobody would.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I know.” She reached behind her and grabbed his cheek. She pulled him towards her to kiss him but he didn’t kiss back.

“Hey, uh, don’t do that if me being a good soldier is turning you on. I don’t go for that.”

She stopped, because he was right. A lifetime of being taught that that’s what makes a man worthwhile will do that to you. And she liked it when he was brave, and it upset her that he didn’t think he was. For as flaky, as chicken as he thought he was, he was the one she wanted to cling to when things got bad. When they’d had to airlift Kim and Trapper out of the minefield it was him she had clutched onto, even though Frank was only a few feet away. When they had to seek refuge in the cave it was him she’d wanted to hold even as he panicked from claustrophobia. Maybe he wasn’t _brave_ , but he could be self-sacrificing when it came to that. He certainly always put the well-being of his patients over his own. He saw that as the minimum requirement for going into medicine.

“Will you read me something?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got a whole stack of books on your bedside table. Read me something. Whatever you’re in the middle of.” She patted him encouragingly on the thigh.

“I’m in the middle of all of them.”

“For Christ’s sake. Here,” she said, reaching over blindly and picking up the first book her hands landed on. It was a new paperback by an author she didn’t recognize. “ _On the Road_ ,” she read aloud. She felt him chuckle against her.

“Oh, yeah, I was liking that. His friends are trying to convince him to come out west with them.”

“Just start from where you left off.” He took the book from her and flipped it open to a dog-eared page.

He read, “‘Marylou began making love to me; she said Dean was going to stay with Camille and she wanted me to go with her. “Come back to San Francisco with us. We’ll live together. I’ll be a good girl for you.” But I knew Dean loved Marylou, and I also knew Marylou was doing this to make Lucille jealous, and I wanted nothing of it. Still and all, I licked my lips for the luscious blonde.’”

“It does not say that,” Margaret interrupted.

“It does!” he insisted. “And how apropos.” She could hear him smirking. He went on, “‘When Lucille saw Marylous pushing me into the corners and giving me the word and forcing kisses on me she accepted Dean’s invitation to go out into the car; but they just talked and drank some of the Southern moonshine I left in the compartment. Everything was being mixed up, and all was falling. I knew my affair with Lucille wouldn’t last much longer. She wanted me to be _her way_. She was married to a longshoreman who treated her badly. I was willing to marry her and take her baby daughter and all if she divorced the husband; but there wasn’t even enough money to get a divorce and the whole thing was hopeless, besides which Lucille would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.’”

“Stop, stop,” Margaret said. She took the book out of his hands and looked at the page, trying to catch him in making things up and finding he’d been reading verbatim. Something Frank had said years ago was echoing in her head. _We’ll train him up our way_ , about BJ, when they’d read his file after Trapper went home. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to live _her way_ these days. She envied Hawkeye for always knowing that that wasn’t what he wanted, even if it did make him run from one falling star to another, from Carlye to Trapper to Kyung-Soon to BJ (to her) until he dropped. It was still morning, but it felt like nighttime, and she had nothing to offer anybody except her own confusion.

“You okay?” Hawkeye asked, while she was still staring, eyes unfocused, at the text of the book.

“Yeah,” she said. “Here. Keep going.” She handed it back to him and closed her eyes as he read, feeling the vibrations through his chest. His voice wasn’t very deep, or very smooth, but it was still one of the most soothing sounds she’d ever known. They could have been like that for hours. Margaret dozed off and was awakened by a kiss on the top of her head.

“Hey, uh, I think I’m gonna take a shower. Join me if you want. Though the bathroom is laughably small.” It didn’t sound half as sleazy as all the other times he’d made similar propositions. She went with him. He was right, of course, about the size of the shower, but she didn’t mind.

They didn’t bother to get dressed after; they just sauntered around the apartment dripping in a couple of towels. Hawkeye pulled the other night’s pizza box out of the fridge and ate a slice cold. He offered her the box and she did the same. It wasn’t very good after two days, but they’d had worse. Neither of them mentioned it, but they were both thinking how even frostbitten days old pizza held its own against anything that had come out of the mess tent.

Back in the bedroom, Hawkeye dressed again in boxers and a clean shirt. He indicated his dresser drawers for Margaret to pick something to wear if she wanted. She rooted around and pulled out something soft and navy blue. _Navy_ blue. Too close to army green?

“‘Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons,’” she read off the shirt before putting it on. Hawkeye was thin, and it was an old shirt, so it didn’t hang off her the way Donald’s used to. She thought maybe she preferred it that way.

“Mm-hm,” he agreed.

“You know that’s very impressive, right?”

“That explains why my dad was so proud.”

“I’m serious,” she said. “Move over.” He made room for her and she sat with her knees up and her back against the pillows while he sprawled out with his hands behind his head.

“Making yourself comfortable?” he said.

“I never knew you went to Columbia. Charles was always razzing you and BJ for being… unsophisticated.”

“BJ went to Stanford. That stuff doesn’t matter. There was no arguing with Charles when it came to class.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She scooted down in the bed and laid her head in his lap. He stroked her hair and she almost found herself imagining she was back home with Ben. Hawkeye made her feel relaxed, unguarded in a way that would have scared her if she hadn’t known how reluctant he was to hurt her. He was enigmatic and simple at the same time.

“Can I ask you something?” he said softly.

“Yes.” She propped herself up so she was lying on her stomach and facing him.

“Something I never understood. Everybody was always threatening to send me to the nuthouse for hating the war. I didn’t get it. That’s not crazy.” God, he could be so stupid sometimes. He was so naive about the way certain things worked it was practically endearing.

“I don’t… I don’t think that’s what anybody meant. I think they thought you were crazy for trying to stand up to the army,” she took a breath, “Because if you were sane you’d know it wouldn’t work. I thought about that for a long time after we went home, actually.”

“No kidding?”

“No,” she shook her head. She sat up, and close to him, so their eyes were at the same level. He scratched absently at his chest, pulling slightly at the collar of his shirt.

“It bothered me that something I loved so much, could find so much comfort in, could torture you so much," she said.

“I thought the same thing in the opposite direction.”

“I can’t give you all the credit, but I’d be lying if I said you weren’t part of the reason I wanted to be a civilian.”

They were sitting so close she swore she could hear him swallow.

“You know, um. That I can go for,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?” she said, and she kissed him, and he kissed her back, and it was the softest of them all. And this time they just kissed, and Hawkeye drew up his knees so they were both sitting cross-legged opposite yet almost on top of each other, and he gently ran his tongue along hers and they both tasted like day old pizza and like the confusion that was all they had to offer. Margaret pulled back slightly, and bit her bottom lip. 

“You know I used to worry about you, all the time?” she said.

He looked genuinely surprised. “Little old me?”

“You idiot. You ruffled so many feathers, I was sure one day you were going to end up in the stockade. Remember when Frank had you court-martialed?” She reached up to massage her temples. “Mutiny,” she whispered, still remembering the disbelief she’d felt the first time around. She believed in military efficiency as much as the next woman, but sometimes enough was enough.

“Ah, Frank,” Hawkeye said, almost seamlessly avoiding the need to talk about his chronic recklessness. “Honestly, Margaret, what did you ever see in him?”

“Frank wasn’t so bad, was he? He wasn’t that lousy of a surgeon.”

“No. Not really,” he agreed.

“So what was the big problem, then?”

Hawkeye sighed. He rubbed his eyes. All of a sudden Margaret worried he was going to cry.

“He seemed to think we were doing a good thing there.”

“We were spreading democracy,” Margaret said quietly, even though she’d already told him she thought the war was pointless.

“You really believe that?” Hawkeye said. “Think about it. What did we really bring over there, anyway? We all went home to our families, our houses, our, our, our libraries. Our hospitals.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “We acted like we were going to, but we didn’t bring them any of that stuff. We left them with nothing. As a matter of fact, we left them with less than they had when we got there.”

Senseless destruction, and in aid of what? Margaret didn’t like to think about it.

“Think of it this way,” Hawkeye went on, “They killed our guys, right? Our soldiers? Whoever _they_ are, anyway, like it wasn’t just guys conscripted off the streets even worse than ours.” He sighed again, to even his breathing. “And what did we do? We killed them all. We tried to kill them all. I mean, you saw the people that came into the O.R. Women. Little kids. Old men, farmers.” He was tearing up at the thought of it. “And I was there helping them do it.”

“Oh, Hawkeye,” she said. She felt bad for him, but it was halfway between pity and sympathy. “You never killed anybody.”

He looked at her with so much pain in his eyes she thought he might keel over. Or she might.

“Sure I did, Margaret,” he said. “Sure I did.”

There were a couple ways Margaret wasn’t like Frank. For one thing, she didn’t really believe the war was _good_ , just that it was something more like inevitable, that the American way for all its values did involve some inherent violence, and that hopefully, it would all be worth it in the end. She also, unlike Frank, had known Hawkeye wasn’t putting on an act. Frank had often complained about his hero complex; Margaret had thought it was a little more complicated than that. Now she knew for sure.

“They never should have put someone like you in that position.” She hardly knew what she meant by _someone like him_ , but that wasn’t what he took her up on.

“ _They_?” He said, glaring daggers she was surprised she couldn’t feel. She swallowed.

“We.”

And all at once they were back to square one. She could grow however much she wanted. She could even resign her commission for all he cared. To Hawkeye, a big part of her would always be that Regular Army Clown he’d met more than six years ago. It was unfair, she thought, that she could overlook all those horrible things he’d done, his complete and total lack of respect, while he would never forgive her for her past. It was also so completely _Hawkeye_ that she couldn’t believe she’d ever expected anything different from him.

But he wasn’t glaring anymore. His expression had shifted to another one she recognized just as readily, the same one of exhaustion and resignation she’d seen on him at the end of any number of seemingly endless shifts that made her want to do nothing else but kiss him on the forehead and tuck him into bed. He was so much more sensitive than she was. He was more sensitive than any woman she’d ever met. She kissed him, and he kissed her back like he liked it but wished he didn’t. She lifted his shirt and traced a line down his chest, her fingers lingering at the waistband of his shorts.

“Don’t do that if you feel like you owe me something,” he said. He practically spat it. He could go from zero to sixty almost as fast as she could.

“Fine,” she said, and she pushed herself backwards so she was sitting across from him again. Looking straight at him, she licked her hand, and stuck it down her own underwear.

“What are you doing?” he asked dryly, although it was quite obvious.

“This has nothing to do with you,” she said. He rolled his eyes.

“Whatever.” He got up and left. The door would have slammed behind him but there was a pile of dirty clothes on the floor acting as a makeshift doorjamb that muffled the sound. She heard the bathroom door lock and based on how long he was gone she had a pretty good idea of what he was doing in there. Serves him right, she thought, for her to be right here but for him to have to take care of himself alone. When he came back he said it was getting late, or dark, or both, and he’d ordered them another pizza. He sat down with his knees up and his back against the headboard. Margaret got up and perched on the windowsill, and watched the Empire State Building lights go on.

“Why did you join the army? Really?” he asked, presumably once he could no longer stand the quiet.

“Why did you become a doctor? Really.”

“You really think that’s the same?”

“It’s what your father does, isn’t it?”

He held her gaze, steely-eyed, for a minute, then looked away.

When the pizza got there, he put the box down on the bed between them.

“They would revoke my medical license if I didn’t change these sheets anyway,” he said in answer to her beleaguered look. Besides the minutes they’d spent what could only be described as masturbating out of spite, while they were eating was some of the only time they’d spent in silence all day. Good. Margaret needed some time to think.

Margaret remembered meeting him for the first time. The first thing she’d noticed were his eyes, his disaffected expression in sharp contrast to their distinctive blue. Then his hair, which was thick and black and mussed by the wind. She’d always thought light eyes and dark hair were the prettiest combination. She almost developed a crush on him, right then, in the first fifteen seconds before he spoke. After that, of course, it all went quite downhill.

Pierce had been complicated. It was years before she stopped thinking of him as ‘Pierce’ and started thinking of him as ‘Hawkeye.’ How he wanted to be thought of. He was everything she wanted in a doctor: skilled surgically, with diagnostic acumen and an excellent bedside manner complete with genuine compassion and a sense of humor. And he was the exact opposite of everything she wanted in an officer.

(Margaret also remembered meeting McIntyre for the first time, and seeing Pierce fall immediately in love with him, and not really knowing what she was looking at.)

(She also remembered this visiting surgeon from Greece, a real hunk. She’d been discussing some cases from post-op with Pierce in the compound when he rolled up, and she’d had to slightly stop herself from drooling on her epaulettes.

“Wow,” she’d muttered aloud.

“Yeah,” Pierce had agreed, and she’d looked up to see him making a face not unlike the one she’d imagined she’d been making herself.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” She’d whispered with slightly manic undertones.

“How dare you,” he’d said, “I’ve never been serious in my life.”

“You could get in serious trouble for this!”

He’d finally torn his eyes away and was looking at her. “I could get in serious trouble for a lot of things.” 

She’d looked back ahead. “I guess so.” She’d rested her head on his shoulder as they stood there. Gingerly, he’d placed an arm around her, and after a few more moments, rested his head on hers.

“Does BJ know?” She’d asked quietly, not even sure herself if she was asking in general or in particular.

“I don’t know,” he’d said, before leading them to pre-op arm in arm.)

(She also remembered not minding, and deciding to love him more, rather than shun him, as he continued to stand for everything she stood against, which was all the more reason to love him.)

They were still sitting on opposite ends of the bed, the pizza box now on the floor and both their legs taking up the space in the middle so they formed a sort of ying-yang sign in his bedroom. Hawkeye was staring out the window behind her, but seemed in a better mood now they’d eaten. Margaret tapped his knee with her foot.

“Why do you love BJ?” she said.

“What do you mean? You’ve met him. I dare anybody not to love him.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not a homosexual.”

“Now she tells me.”

“I guess I wondered– If you didn’t only– _do stuff–_ with him– because it was dangerous?” She asked, sounding pained, trying to communicate her genuine curiosity without being too crass, for whatever reason. Of course she believed he loved BJ. But she also knew Hawkeye had a self-destructive streak a mile wide and didn’t care to see BJ hurt in that crossfire. She didn’t know what had gone on between them since they’d been home.

But, “I– we hardly–!” Hawkeye protested. Of course, BJ could never cheat on his precious Peg, even if he could never tell her for entirely different reasons either.

“Not him then. Trapper.”

“You knew about that?”

“Lucky guess.”

“There’s your answer, then.”

“What, you loved him, too?”

“Yes,” Hawkeye answered, like it was perfectly obvious.

“And you’re _not_ a homosexual?”

“Margaret, I’ve had sex with you like eight times in the last two days.”

“Yeah, and you thought about BJ each time.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’ll bet.”

“Wanna make it nine? I promise I’ll think about something _straight_.” He moved from the other side of the bed towards her, and put his thigh between hers. He ran his fingers up her arm and starting whispering things like they were sexy.“Lawnmowers. White teeth. Whole milk. Carving the Thanksgiving turkey.”

She giggled and pushed him away. Of course the exact kind of dirty talk Frank used to use on her would be Hawkeye’s idea of a joke.

“Straight my ass,” she said. “You couldn’t be less straight if you tried.”

“That’s ‘cause,” he kissed her lips, “I’m not,” then her neck, “straight,” then her throat. She pulled him up by his shoulders to look in his eyes. They darted down to her mouth, and she saw his quirk up in a smile. He knew he’d intrigued her.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re sexy,” he kissed her on the mouth, “BJ’s sexy,” then her right breast, “Trapper’s sexy,” her left. “Get the picture?” He walked kisses down her stomach and stopped between her legs.

“Yeah,” she breathed, shakily. “I do.”

By the time she finally finished he’d had to come up for air and to massage his jaw twice.

“I hope that was worth it,” he said. “I won’t be able to play my harmonica for a week.”

“I hardly think that’s my fault,” she said, but she hadn’t really minded. It felt good, even if it was too slow (ironic for someone with a mouth as fast as Hawkeye, no?), and she liked the excuse to keep running her fingers through his hair. After a few more moments like that, where he stayed lying in her lap, he got up, pressing a kiss to her forehead as he left.

“Hm, gross!” she called after him.

“It’s only your fluids!” He called back through the apartment.

Hawkeye came back with two glasses of water. He set one on the bedside table for her and clutched his with both hands as he climbed into the other end of the bed. Margaret put her feet in his lap.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Crazy,” Margaret said. Hawkeye smiled, because he knew what she meant. He always knew what she meant. Besides, his mood was really boosted now.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“Can I say something crazy?”

“Please.”

“I want to go to San Francisco.”

“What?” She seemed to keep surprising him. He hadn't really surprised her once all day. 

“I want go to to San Francisco and see BJ.”

“Yeah, I figured you didn’t just wanna see the Golden Gate Bridge–”

“I loved him, too, you know. Maybe not the way you loved him but he’s a very special person. I’d like to go to California to see him.”

“Margaret, I get it, of course I get it.” Hawkeye sighed and ran his hands over his face and through his hair. “I’m just a little confused. What was today? What about Ben?”

“I don’t know.” Margaret exhaled. “I feel like he doesn’t know me. Like he doesn’t know who I really am. I don’t think I know who he is, either.”

“Margaret, you can know people who you didn’t happen to go through the, the, the trauma of war with. You can love people you just met in your regular life.”

“Do you?” Margaret asked, partially as a gotcha and partially sincere. Hawkeye fixed her with a piercing stare. _Piercing_ , she thought. The kind of joke it would absolutely thrill him to see her make any other time.

“I used to,” he finally answered.

“And what do you do now?”

Silence. Then, “Fine.”

“I want you to come with me, you know.”

“Please, I would not just unleash you unsupervised onto the unsuspecting Hunnicutts. But you can’t just leave Ben without saying anything.”

“I’m not leaving! I only want to go for a week. You must have that much vacation time saved up, I’m using mine right now. We’ll go for a week, and then I’ll know.”

“A week?” Hawkeye said, running a pensive hand over his chin. “I can swing that. We’re not just gonna show up, though, I’ll call BJ tomorrow. In the meantime, you figure out what you’re going to say to Ben.”

She didn’t stay another night at Hawkeye’s. She caught the last train back to Princeton, the sister to the one she’d taken in the night before, and didn’t know if she was going to lie or not when she got back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, embarrassingly or not the idea for this chapter was basically based on the episode of scrubs “my bed, banter, and beyond” where jd and elliott (wow. JD… BJ… im galaxy braining atm) spend the whole day in bed eating pizza and having sex. Can’t recommend scrubs enough actually, if you like mash you’re halfway to liking it already, and the soundtrack is amazing although some of the best songs got replaced when they moved from netflix to Hulu. Anyway
> 
> Also among the works cited is of course “on the road,” which is a very important book to me and which miraculously was published in 1955 
> 
> Up next: san fransisco and the bj/hawk/margaret golden trio <3


	3. Frisco Redux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has become almost comically self-indulgent but what else is fanfiction for yknow? This chapter to demonstrate further that this is the hawkmarg fic for hawkbeej truthers

Hawkeye had given Margaret a book to take with her.

“Something to remember me by,” he’d said, with a wink. Inside _The Town and the City_ she found a strip of paper with his phone number on it, and a small doodle of a bow and arrow. She called him when she got back to let him know she was home safe, and he told her he was about to call BJ and would she cross her fingers and toes for them all. She figured that probably wasn’t necessary.

She lied to Ben. She hated to do it, but she didn’t see how it would be better to tell the truth. She wasn’t like BJ, and he wasn’t like Peg. She didn’t feel compelled to share every aspect of her life with him, and certainly not the fact that she was having second (or third, or fourth) thoughts about the whole marriage thing, and certainly not the fact that she’d just spent the day with Hawkeye Pierce, molester of registered nurses, baring more than just her soul.

So she wanted to leave him. It’s not like she wanted to leave him for Hawkeye. She was the exact opposite of BJ, actually, who didn’t want to leave him _or_ Peg. And it was unfair that he was able to have it both ways while she was about to get nothing. She tried not to dwell on it. She just needed some time to clear her head. BJ was better for that than Hawkeye. And he’d never tried to sleep with her before.

She told Ben that Hawkeye (“Dr. Pierce”) had invited her to a convention in San Francisco that he was going to with another old friend of theirs, and that the message had come through while she was stuck in the hospital all the other day while he’d been resting up. If he was suspicious, he didn’t show it. He trusted her implicitly, which was nice, even if she felt she didn’t deserve it. Hawkeye and BJ didn’t used to trust her. They did now, for the most part.

BJ had made a horrible first impression on her. Hawkeye when he was still Pierce had spent the whole day practically AWOL and then brought him back raving drunk. The first words she’d ever heard him say were ‘What say you, ferret face?’ It was genuinely disgraceful. She’d been appalled, and couldn’t believe that McIntyre had gone only to be replaced by someone even worse. At least Trapper had kept it civil for about a fortnight before him and Hawkeye had become incorrigible.

But the next day, BJ when he was still Hunnicutt had come to her tent and apologized. He’d said that Hawkeye told him she was a good egg, even if she hadn’t made all the right choices in her life. He’d said he hoped she could understand that Hawkeye was only trying to help, taking him to Rosie’s, and that he had helped him a great deal that day. And he’d said that it was okay if she didn’t believe him, and that he’d make it up to her in the O.R., which, of course, he did, among other ways, all the while remaining a perfect gentleman. She couldn’t wait to see him.

On the plane, Hawkeye sat in the window. Margaret sat in the middle and leaned on him and slept. He was wearing a sweater he seemed to have knitted himself, and it scratched at her cheeks, but Margaret after all her years in the service had developed the uncanny ability to sleep anywhere, including Hawkeye Pierce’s bony shoulder. He woke her gently as they were landing, and she could practically feel his heart racing in his wrist as he shook her.

The first thing she noticed when she saw the Hunnicutts in the airport was how big Erin was! In her mind she was still the little baby from all of BJ’s photos but now she was a real person. She must have been about to start the first grade. Peggy looked every bit as beautiful as she remembered. Her hair lay perfect and curled at her shoulders, and her cardigan matched her socks. BJ was grinning his huge goofy grin as he saw them approach, and immediately pulled Hawkeye into the warmest, most enthusiastic hug she’d ever seen. He kissed him on the cheek and she was almost surprised when he didn’t kiss him on the mouth until she remembered they were literally in an airport surrounded by about a thousand other people and her heart broke a little bit at the thought of it. At the moment, it didn’t seem to be bothering either of them.

Peggy shook her hand and introduced herself, and said how nice it was to finally meet her in person. She told Erin,

“This is your Auntie Margaret,” and she could feel eyes welling up as Erin held out her tiny hand for her to shake in a perfect imitation of her prim and proper mother. Then Erin ran up and hugged Hawkeye about the legs while he laughed wildly and planted a kiss on the top of her head. Peggy and Hawkeye hugged and kissed each other on both cheeks while BJ came up to Margaret, smiling from absolute ear to ear. She pulled him close and held him as tightly as she had Hawkeye in the hospital what felt like years ago, even if it was barely weeks. They broke the embrace long enough for them both to struggle out some excited words about how glad they were to see each other before they were hugging again.

“You’re not in love with her, too, are you?” She heard Peggy good-naturedly joke from behind BJ. He laughed and returned to her side.

“Me? No,” BJ said. “Are you?” he said to Peg.

“Guess we’ll find out,” she said, running a hand along Margaret’s back and starting to lead them outside.

Hawkeye came alive when he was with BJ. Margaret couldn’t believe she’d never seen it before. Of course she’d seen how he looked at him. She’d seen how he looked at Trapper, too, like he was just waiting for the room to clear so he could get his hands on him, which was also how he looked at just about every man or woman who passed through the 4077th in the three years they’d been there. The differences with BJ were subtle, but they were there. Hawkeye was so obviously head over heels in love with him. He was witty, but BJ made him wittier. He was kind, but BJ made him kinder. And he was deranged with passion for his principles and for the people he loved, and BJ made him infinitely more so.

Hawkeye also slipped seamlessly back into the Hunnicutts’ lives like he didn’t just see them for a week or so every few months. He and BJ took Erin to the grocery store while Peggy did some chores around the house. Margaret kept her company, sitting at the kitchen counter with a magazine propped open, not really reading it.

“Can I ask you something?” Margaret said. “You can ignore me if it’s too personal.” Peggy smiled knowingly; what else could Margaret possibly be wondering about?

“Shoot,” she said.

“What’s really going on between those two?” she asked, “And are you really okay with it?” Peggy laughed quietly, and Margaret couldn’t quite tell if there was bitterness somewhere under all that sweet. She put down her cleaning things and faced Margaret.

“I love BJ,” she said. “But the most important thing we ever did was make Erin. It doesn’t matter to me if he loves Hawkeye so long as he loves Erin more than anyone else in the world, which he does.”

“BJ is a great father,” Margaret said.

“Yes,” Peggy agreed. She smoothed her skirt and went to go sit on a plush chair in the living room. “And he does love me. Although sometimes I’m not sure if he loves me so much as he loves the life we have.” Margaret had a million questions racing through her head, but she kept quiet for the time being.

“I know Hawkeye wants to be back east, near his dad” Peggy went on, looking rather past Margaret than at her, “but sometimes I wonder if we wouldn’t all be happier, me and Erin included, if Hawk would just come to California.” She sighed, and moved to run her fingers through her hair seemingly before realizing it was pristinely coiffed so just returned her fidgeting hands to her lap.

“What’s stopping him?” Margaret asked quietly.

“Me, probably,” Peggy said. “His idea of me. But, God! If he would just get over himself and stay then BJ could actually be with him and I could stay or find someone else or not. Sometimes I don’t even know what I want besides for them to be happy. I certainly never want to lose BJ's friendship. And I love Hawkeye to death! And they both love Erin very much. Wouldn’t that be a pretty picture, the three of us raising her together like a houseful of socialists.” Margaret raised her eyebrows. Peggy laughed on a sharp exhale.

“I don’t know,” Peggy said. “Our whole life is normal and upside down at the same time. I think BJ got more used to living in two places at once than he wants to admit.” Before Margaret could ask what that meant, they heard the door unlock, and Hawkeye, BJ, and Erin come tumbling in. BJ had to go to work, so he ran upstairs to shower before going back out. Hawkeye made to start unpacking the groceries, and Erin grabbed Peggy’s hand to take her someplace to play. Peggy went with her but not without giving Margaret a sympathetic glance and a lot to think about. 

She stewed on what Peggy had told her. Margaret’s life had always fluctuated wildly between the traditional and its antithesis. Being in the army gave her traditional values, but there was nothing less traditional than a woman in the military. She wanted simultaneously to be just like every other little girl, and to be set apart from them. Eventually, she married the army, just like Hawkeye had married his work. It had troubled him deeply that they were just sewing kids up to send them back to get blown up again. Maybe he was right, that being an army nurse did carry with it some inherent contradictions.

“I don’t think I want to get married,” she said aloud to Hawkeye. After he’d finished with the groceries he’d joined her on the sofa with a book. He looked up.

“I didn’t think we were going to.”

“Not to you, you idiot. In general.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. Me neither.” That figured. Margaret drummed her fingers on her thigh.

“Remember what you said, about me being… sexy?” She said. She hated how she often felt so prudish in the daytime, and uninhibited only at night. Who made those rules, anyway?

“I really am sorry to kiss and run, Margaret, but you know my heart belongs to another. He’s six foot three, with bright blue eyes, _and_ he owns his own home,” Hawkeye faked swooning.

“That’s what I mean.” She tried desperately to make him take this seriously. “What you said about me _and_ BJ. I think I’ve felt that way, too.”

“Again, I’m sorry, but BJ’s already spoken for. Me and Peggy are busy speaking over each other.” God, he wasn’t listening to her.

“I _mean_ I think I’ve felt that way about other… about women.”

“Oh,” he said, his energy deflating. “No kidding?”

“No,” she said. She carefully placed her magazine down on an end table. “I keep thinking about these friendships I used to have, when I was young. These intense, intense friendships that I… I thought everybody felt like that. But lately it’s been reminding me of how you and BJ are and I–”

Hawkeye’s expression had shifted from respectful sincerity to goofily grinning. “Margaret, don’t worry, that’s great! Hey, I’m happy for you.”

“Don’t go throwing me a ticker tape parade just yet. I’m not really sure about this, you know. I just thought… Well, I figured I could talk to you about it.”

“And I’m so glad you did. I’m glad you felt you could.” He threw his book down. “But do you want to know for sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“This is San Fransisco! We’ll take you someplace you can find out!”

Which is how a few hours later Margaret found herself with the three of them about to go into a bar on the Castro, the sight of which might have made her father roll over in his grave, if he were dead. She’d given Hawkeye the O.K. to tell BJ and Peg why he was taking them there, and Peg squeezed her hand encouragingly as Hawkeye led them inside and to a booth in a corner.Peggy sat opposite him, and invited Margaret to squeeze in next to her. Margaret didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it. It wasn’t particularly loud or raucous, no one was doing anything particularly interesting. People were just dancing with their dates, or sitting with their friends, like she was. BJ brought them back a round of drinks from the bar, a beer and a shot for everyone.

“To peace!” Peggy toasted.

“To the Golden Gate Bridge!” BJ said.

“To clam chowder!” Hawkeye said.

“Cheers!” Margaret said, when she couldn’t think of anything to say, and they all laughed wildly after necking their shots.

“Do you come out a lot?” Margaret asked. BJ shrugged and shook his head.

“Usually we try and stay home with Erin, really,” he said.

“So it is extra special when we do get to go out,” Peggy added. “He brings it out in us,” she said, pointing a thumb at Hawkeye.

“And you love me for it,” he said with his cheeky grin.

“That’s right,” Peggy said, reaching across the table and messing up his hair. He laughed and combed through it with his fingers, then settled back and casually put his arm around BJ. They looked so natural, so comfortable, and Peggy even looked happy, too. Maybe her and BJ didn’t have the kind of love little girls grow up dreaming of, but they had a different kind of love, all three of them, and who’s to say one type of love is better or more important than another?

“This place is fun,” Margaret said, glancing around.

“It’s kind of a city of free love,” Peggy said.

“I thought that was Philadelphia,” Margaret said.

“That’s brotherly love,” Hawkeye said.

“That’s _not_ what this is,” BJ said.

Hawkeye and BJ were in love. That much was clear. But by virtue of it being 1956 they were denied the storybook ending they deserved. Hawkeye loved Peggy for being able to give some of that to BJ. Peggy loved Hawkeye for giving BJ the rest. And BJ and Peg loved each other enough to make Erin, who they all three (four) loved more than life itself. Margaret felt herself falling more and more in love with each of them and their life as the minutes passed. They drank, and chatted, and joked, and found themselves on the dance floor, rotating partners as the whims took them.

She danced with Hawkeye to Cole Porter. He spun her, and dipped her, and made her laugh, and made sure she was having a good time if she ever got a faraway look in her eyes or seemed to pensive. She reassured him she was, and held tighter to his arm as he led them in a goofy, energetic step around the club. 

She danced with BJ to Gershwin. He and Hawkeye both had such distinctive gaits, Hawk with his sloping shoulders and feet practically dragging along the ground, BJ with his long, confident stride. BJ danced just like that. She remembered the last time she’d danced with him, on his and Peggy’s anniversary all those years ago. It had seemed only natural that she be the one to stand in, but now she found herself wondering if it shouldn’t have been Hawkeye. Even if it should have, it never would have. And that was at the bottom of the list of reasons Hawkeye why hated that place.

She danced with Peggy to something low and slow that she didn’t recognize. Margaret was taller, and she led, but it didn’t feel like leading. It almost felt like they were doing it together. Over Peggy’s shoulder she saw Hawkeye and BJ, dancing so close their bodies were almost touching. Hawkeye rested his head on BJ’s shoulder and looked so at home there that she got chills. Peggy squeezed her hand again to get her attention.

“You okay, Margaret?” she asked. God, their faces were so close together. Only Hawkeye ever talked that close without intending to take it further.

“People have been asking me that all night,” Margaret said. “I think I’ll know in the morning whether I was okay tonight.” Peggy smiled slightly, understanding. She rubbed Margaret’s shoulder blade with her left hand and saw Margaret practically melt into the touch. Peggy used her other hand to tuck some hair behind Margaret’s ear.

“You have the most beautiful eyes,” Peg said. “Did they ever tease you about having green eyes in the army?” Margaret swallowed. She didn’t want to mention what they did tease her about. And it didn’t go unnoticed that that meant BJ had never referred to her as “Hot Lips” despite years of opportunity. _Hunnicutt one, McIntyre nil_ , she thought bitterly.

“People don’t usually talk about my eyes,” was all Margaret said. Peggy smiled.

“They should.” Margaret became distracted from dancing and stepped on Peggy’s foot. She just laughed in surprise and shifted her step a little. Now Peggy was more like leading.

“Can I try something?” she asked. “Stop me if you don’t like it.”

“Okay,” Margaret breathed, thinking of blinking but finding her eyes stuck open, staring into Peggy’s. Peggy leaned up and brushed her lips against Margarets. She smelled of a sweet perfume and tasted slightly of spearmint. Her lips were very soft, softer than Hawkeye’s, and slightly sticky with lip gloss. Margaret’s heart was racing. Peggy was the picture of composure. It seemed she always was. Funny for BJ, considering she’d never seen anyone with less composure than Hawkeye.

“Are you all right?” Peggy asked, stirring Margaret from her reverie.

“Very,” she answered, smiling. She bit her bottom lip. “Do you do that a lot?”

Peggy shrugged. “Sometimes,” she said. “I don’t think I’m in the market for a wife. I’ve got enough in the way of husbands!” And they burst out in peals of laughter so loud that Hawkeye and BJ heard, and came and joined them, and they danced, and they laughed, and it was perfect.

They hadn’t wanted the babysitter to have to stay too late, so they’d gone home early. Hawkeye had stopped drinking after their first round, so he’d been able to drive them home despite being almost worse in the Hunnicutt’s station wagon than in a janky army jeep. Margaret woke up exhausted and slightly shaky on the details of the previous night. As she was coming down the stairs she overheard Hawkeye and Erin having a conversation amidst the crunching of cornflakes. How unlike him to be the one full of energy after a night out, and her the one down with a hangover.

“Are you going to marry Auntie Margaret?” Erin asked him.

“Probably not,” he said warily.

“Why not?”

“Well… I think that you should be best friends with the person you marry. But you know your dad is my best friend,” he said relatively tactfully.

“Oh,” Erin said. “And you can’t marry him because he’s already married to Mom.”

“Right,” Hawkeye said, and Margaret could imagine the face he was making, of pleasant surprise and trying to stifle a laugh.

She decided not to torture Hawkeye by letting that go on any longer, and joined them at the kitchen counter. Erin greeted her enthusiastically but said she had to go to a playdate and hurried off to wake BJ or Peggy. Hawkeye ruffled her hair as she ran off.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” he called after her as she darted up the stairs. “Coffee?” he offered Margaret.

“Please,” she said. The events of the previous night were like a whirlwind, and a blur, not because she’d been too drunk to remember, quite the opposite. In fact, she’d never felt more alert. She just couldn’t believe what she’d done. It was one thing to know in the abstract that Hawkeye and BJ were in love. It was another thing to know for certain that they did something about it. It was another thing to know that Peggy didn’t hate BJ for it or even mind that much, so long as he was around to help raise their daughter, which he did with avid dedication and love. It was yet another thing to know just how much Hawkeye was willing to tolerate for the sake of being with BJ when he could, however little it was. It was another thing that sometimes Peg Hunnicutt took some of the love she had for BJ and spent it kissing other women. It was another thing entirely that she had kissed her last night, and liked it rather a lot.

“How are you feeling?” Hawkeye asked, passing her a warm mug of coffee. _University of San Fransisco School of Arts and Sciences_ was printed on the side. He looked almost comically at home in the Hunnicutt’s kitchen, brewing coffee and raiding the fridge for Margaret’s benefit. 

“A little crazy,” she answered honestly. “A little confused.” She took a sip and recoiled at the taste. She held out the cup for Hawkeye to give her some sugar, with he did with an apologetic smile.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Good, though,” she added. “Not scared, not angry. Just… getting used to the idea that I’m more different than I thought.” He reached over the counter and rubbed her encouragingly on the shoulder.

“You’ll be okay, Margaret,” he said. She smiled, and nodded, and sipped her coffee. He was about to say something else, something about making breakfast, but she stopped him with a question of her own.

“Don’t you want to stay?” she said. She’d been wondering it since she’d seen how he and BJ had hugged in the airport, how even in complete safety and surrounded by nearly everyone they loved they’d clung to each other like drowning men finally catching a lifesaver.

“Stay?” he said. “No, I can’t stay. I’ve got a life back there, I–”

“Some life, Hawkeye,” she said sternly. There was a lot she wanted to say to him. She wanted to tell him he was being stupid for denying himself the chance to be with the love of his life and pretending it was for Peggy’s sake. She wanted to tell him not to be scared of making this commitment just because he thought he was the type of person who couldn’t make big commitments. She wanted to tell him that his dad would be okay without him since he wouldn’t really be without him and San Fransisco isn’t nearly as far away as Korea and either way it’s different because he wouldn’t be trapped there because of a goddamn war. But all she said was, “I want to stay.” 

“What do you mean you want to stay? Fuck my thing, _you’ve_ got a life back there.” He was suddenly incredibly serious.

“I can deal with my life there,” she said calmly. It was only a matter of a few phone calls to give her notice, and she had plenty of people who would give her great references. “But the life I really want is here. With you people. It’s obviously what you want, too, Hawkeye.” She placed her hand over his where his knuckles were growing white on the counter.

“You can’t– I can’t– _people_ can’t just drop everything and move across the country.”

“Yes, they can,” Margaret said. “People do it all the time when they find their chance for happiness.” She sighed. “I know the only time you ever uprooted like that was when you were drafted but–”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, “that is not what we’re talking about here.”

“I think it might be,” she said, and stared at him, determined not to break first. She won.

“Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes, “but I can’t stay. Peggy… when we first got home, BJ told her the truth, about everything, and she told him to stay. That she still wanted him. That she and Erin still loved him, and needed him. She chose him, and he chose her, and I couldn’t stay and that’s just how it has to be, Margaret. Not everybody gets a fucking happy ending.”

“Peg wants you to stay!” Margaret all but shouted. “Peg wants you to stay,” she repeated at a normal volume this time. Hawkeye’s eyes were wide.

“What are you talking about?”

“My God, you are the most emotional yet least emotionally intelligent person I have ever met. Did you never just talk to her? She knows how happy you and BJ make each other. You’d have to be fully stupid not to! Didn’t you say they offered to put you up when we all got home?”

“Well, yeah, but–”

“Goddamn, Hawkeye,” she said. “Out of the two of us, you have it easy this time around.”

“About that,” Hawkeye said. “Promise me you’ll talk to Ben. Really talk to him, explain how you’re feeling. And apologize for blindsiding him. That’s what’s gonna feel worst of all. Thinking that he should have seen it coming. Okay?” he implored. 

“Okay,” she agreed, quickly.

“I’ll talk to BJ,” he said. “And Peg!” he added in response to the glare she shot him.

Margaret had a long talk with Ben back in Princeton. She told him the truth this time, about everything that had happened, and how none of it was his fault but she just couldn’t live the kind of life that had been prescribed for her, and he cried, a lot, and she held it together until he’d gone to bed and then she cried, too, but it wasn’t from sadness. It was from guilt and exhilaration and finally feeling free and feeling so, so sorry that she’d had to hurt someone to get what she wanted, but also finally knowing that it was human to make mistakes and hoping that she hadn’t emotionally damaged Ben too irrevocably because he was really a nice man and would be able to find love again from someone who could actually give it to him. If Hawkeye had come back from Carlye and Trapper able to love BJ (and he had), then she had confidence that Ben would be okay.

Hawkeye had stayed in California while she went back, but had given her his keys so she could stay at his place in the city after she talked everything over with Ben. He said not to worry about anything in there, that he’d come back in a little while to move everything out and visit his dad, but while she was there she decided to pack a few boxes for him and have them shipped over. He could wear some of BJ’s clothes, she figured, but she packed him a couple pairs of jeans, extra socks and underwear, and a few flannel overshirts. She packed a WNYC mug in bubble wrap and threw away all the food that would expire. Then she took the _Horse Feathers_ poster out of its frame and carefully rolled it up, packing with it the graduation photo and the one of his parents on the coast in Maine. Then she went about deciding which books to bring.

She took _A Farewell to Arms_ , as well as the _The Sun Also Rises_ that she’d found all his margin notes in. Hawkeye had asked specifically if she’d bring back something by Kipling, so she also took the ornate _Just-So Stories_ since she knew where to find it. She took _Arrowsmith_ , _Twelfth Night_ , and a copy of _Dante’s Inferno_ so decrepit it almost fell apart while she held it. She couldn’t decide between _Invisible Man_ and _The Invisible Man_ so she took both, threw in _Crime and Punishment_ , _Nausea_ , _The Trial_ , and _The Stranger_ , and hoped that would get him through until he could fill out his collection over there. She’d never figured him a voracious reader before, but for however well she thought she knew him there were always facets that weren’t for her. Obviously BJ knew; he’d sent him books. She was about to call it a day when she remembered something, and couldn’t believe she was about to go without it. She cursed Hawkeye for not arranging his shelves in any discernible order when she had to spend what felt like an hour scouring them for the one book she was certain was there.

“Aha!” she said, when she finally found it nestled between _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and _Treasure Island_. On the inside cover was scrawled “Hawkeye Pierce” in a child’s handwriting. She thumbed through its pages once and placed the _Last of the Mohicans_ on top of the pile, packed the last box, and got ready to go home.

***

_coda: what do you do when it rains? (i get wet)_

BJ had an office. A little office with his name printed on the door in matte silver lettering for his research team at the university to do work studying defibrillation.

“Hawkeye’s going to start working with me at school,” he told Margaret one morning over breakfast. Shw and Hawkeye were in the process of getting a little place to keep up appearances but it was slow going. Right now Hawkeye was in the shower and BJ had the look on his face he wore whenever he was about to involve her in some scheme or prank and she had no possible idea where it was going.

“I asked him last night, and he said yes,” he added excitedly. “‘Pierce and Hunnicutt’ always had a nice ring to it.” So did ‘Pierce and McIntyre, but Margaret didn’t say anything. Besides, BJ was sounding remarkably similar to how she imagined he would talking about a successful marriage proposal.

“That’s wonderful, BJ,” she said, suspicious, but unable to hold back a grin. “‘B.J. Hunnicutt’ and ‘B.F. Pierce’ will look very handsome together on that door.”

“About that,” he said, “could you help me with something? I need your opinion.”

“Yes…?”

“Well, I got something for him. I want to make sure he’s gonna like it.”

“You know him better than I do.”

“You know him pretty well,” BJ said, with a glint in his eye. He drove them to the office, and made her close her eyes as they approached the door. A lovely oak door, she remembered, thinking bitterly of Henry and his stupid desk that stupid Pierce and stupid McIntyre had pilfered for the stupid hydrocortisone that got stupid stolen for the stupid black market.

“Okay, open,” BJ said. The door was different. BJ’s name had been scraped off and replaced by two names in delicate gold leaf.

_B.J. Hunnicutt, M.D._

_Hawkeye Pierce, M.D._

“Oh, BJ,” was all she could say. She was beaming so widely it rendered her speechless. “Oh, BJ.”

“You like?” he said.

“Oh, BJ,” she said again. “It’s perfect.” _Oh, BJ. Oh, Hawkeye._ Later, when BJ took all of them to go see the new office, Hawkeye kissed him and wouldn’t stop until Erin complained that they were being gross and they looked so natural that she couldn’t believe she lived in a world that thought otherwise.

Things settled down, because they always do. Hawkeye adopted two horrible stray cats which he called Arrowsmith and Wickett, saying he and BJ had always reminded him of them. Erin grew old enough to get on her bike and go where she liked, and more and more often Hawkeye stayed in the house with BJ while Peggy stayed in the apartment with Margaret, and years later, on rare nights when Hawkeye and BJ weren’t together for whatever reason, and Hawkeye would stay with her, Margaret would have him read to her, like she had the day she’d made her mind up for good about the kind of life she wanted. Even though she always chose at random from the cascades of books he’d leave half-finished lying around his place and hers, whatever he read was always perfect.

“‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention you.’

‘Well, I certainly can’t understand that.’ The captain was piqued, but managed to carry on with a pretense of optimism. ‘Well, here it is almost September already, so I guess it won’t be too long now. The next time any of the boys ask about me, why, just tell them I’ll be back grinding out those old publicity releases again as soon as Chief White Halfoat dies of pneumonia. Okay?’

The chaplain memorized the prophetic words solemnly, entrances further by their esoteric import. ‘Do you live on berries, herbs, and roots?’ He asked.

‘No, of course not,’ the captain replied with surprise. ‘I sneak into the mess hall through the back and eat in the kitchen. Milo gives me sandwiches and milk.’

‘What do you do when it rains?’

The captain answered frankly. ‘I get wet.’”

Which, Margaret supposed, is what we all do, really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> works cited: “the town and the city” was Kerouac’s first novel and I haven’t actually read it yet so don’t know if it’s as symbolically relevant as “on the road” but my copy is sitting on my shelf rn so I’ll find out eventually
> 
> Arrowsmith and wickett are from the book… “arrowsmith,” a novel from 1924 about the history of medicine which is genuinely enjoyable and which hawkeye canonically brings with him to Korea and which Literally ends with these two friends leaving their families and jobs behind to go into research together in a cabin in the country. (for the record bj is arrowsmith bc he leaves his wife and kid and hawkeye is wickett bc they are chronic bachelors)
> 
> The excerpt at the end is from “catch-22,” one of the best books ever written and the definitive absurdist anti-war war novel, if you are a fan of mash you Must read it imo and not be surprised when plenty of mash dialogue is lifted directly from it (it’s from 1961 and hawkeye would have an absolute breakdown reading it. he Is yossarian)
> 
> @crickelwood on tumblr if you want to say hi! thanks for reading and for your kind comments :)


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